Category Archives: Gotye Project

The songA Distinctive Sound is on the Australian release of the album Like Drawing Blood. On the International release (the copy I have, being in the UK and all) this is replaced by a new version of the song The Only Thing I Know, originally on the Boardface album. I will be making pieces for both songs in this project.

This track is very much an audial collage of sounds, music and vocals. I wanted to reflect the layers and texture with this piece. The cut text emphasises various ‘lyrics’ throughout the song.

This piece is layered writing with an ink pen, acrylic ink applied with a brush (and moved about with a water spritzer) and a final detailing with acrylic in and a small brush.

I took inspiration from the song title itself and the mood of the instrumental song. As it is near Halloween I also wanted to bring out a creepiness in my interpretation of the music.

Hopefully I should be back on track with this project- so many other things have overtaken my time this year. I like to be able to have time to reflect on my ideas about a song and work out the main themes, artwork layering and composition etc. I like to take into consideration music mood, lyrics and Wally’s original musical intention.

With this piece I wanted to capture the overall sombre feeling of the song. I decided to use muted blue and purple ink accented with simple black and white. I also wanted the figure to look and solemn reflective with the jigsaw texture (and the absent pieces) as an obvious link to the song title.

The subtle graphics in the background ink is a collage made in Photoshop from vintage diagrams and text, printed onto acetate and then onto the ink base. The text in the piece is a couple of lines from the song.

With this piece I wanted to capture the overall feeling of the song- joyful and uplifting. I decided to put the complete lyrics of the song (repeated) in a heart as the central focus of the piece. The different silhouettes are bringing everything together within the piece itself.

I created the rainbow ink background to again reinforce the overall joyous and ‘colourful’ nature of the song. I also took inspiration for the official animated video of the song created by Shannon Cross-which can be watched here on Youtube.

Again I used SenshiStock (DA | Tumblr) stock images and poses as references for drawing the silhouettes.

This piece is long overdue as I’ve been busy with other things and that this piece stumped me for a little while. I produced two other pieces for the same song but wasn’t happy with either of them so I endeavoured to start again.

As you can see I was heavily influenced by the amazing official video for this song (watch it here on Youtube) The description of the video explains that it was created by ‘Lucy Dyson by cutting up old magazines, children’s books and photos of innumerable telephones.’

In my piece I used various images from vintage phone adverts, magazines and ‘retro’ inspired patterns to make up the background layer.

Image of the collaged background before painting and ink over the top here.

I wanted to include an image of Wally himself since I haven’t drawn him for a while. I decided to make him annoyed while holding out a phone receiver, again pertaining to the song.

In this piece I wanted to represent two figures- one lonely and missing the other, filled with thoughts about what they are doing, where they are and the uncertainty that goes along with it. The other falling through these thoughts and fading to a vague recollection.

The grey, blue and black hues symbolise these feelings- the colours are darker further away from the figure representing darker thoughts looming. The figure is also slowly being consumed by darker thoughts of the self at the same time.

The other figure exists within the thoughts but is white, vague and also fading into the surrounding thoughts.

You’ve been gone so long you’re fadingAnd it takes all the time Ican find just retainingThoughts of things we didwhile you were hereBut I know you will return my dear

I started the next piece my Gotye Project, here you can see it in various stages and layers. Hopefully I should finish this by the end of the week, a few more layers of ink and paint will bring the whole thing together. You can still see some of the rough sketch/planning lines underneath the ink.

I wish I had started this on thicker paper due to amount of ink I’ve added, however I like how it’s turning out so I’m not going to start over again now.